"Not only we Swedes, but the whole world has the
right to
know what happened to the man who, through his deeds in Budapest,
has
become one of the greatest humanitarians in modern times, has become
a
symbol of the fight for human rights."

Per Anger, former Swedish
ambassador to Australia and Canada and,
during World War II, a member of
the Swedish Foreign Service assigned
in Hungary, concluded his address
with those words on "The Fate of
Raoul Wallenberg" last Wednesday before
an audience of more than
400.

Since 1979, Anger has been searching
for his countryman and
friend, Raoul Wallenberg, whom he last saw Jan. 10,
1945, when both
were trying to evade Nazi troops in Budapest.

"I
told him to hide because they were searching for him," recalls
Anger. "But
you know what he said? He said, `I could never go back
[to Sweden]
without knowing I have done everything I can to
save all the people I
can.' "

"And so he was arrested."

This year marks the 50th
anniversary of Wallenberg's
disappearance, and it was especially fitting
that the 1995 University
Wallenberg Lecture be given by someone who knew
Wallenberg well and
served with him in trying to prevent the destruction
of the Jewish
people in Hungary.

Anger spoke about the man rather
than his deeds, and what may have
motivated him to become a man of such
courageous actions.

"You know about the things he did, all the
people he saved, and
the numbers," he said. "There are films and
documentaries all over
the world about his deeds.

"But all this
tells us not very much about Raoul Wallenberg as a
person. Who was he? Who
is Raoul Wallenberg, as a person?

"I believe," Anger said, "that
many of the ideals he held were
formed during his years in Ann
Arbor."

Wallenberg lost his father when he was only five years old
and was
raised by his grandfather. It was he, Anger said, who insisted
that
Wallenberg come to the United States for an education. As a
student,
Anger said, Wallenberg adopted American ideals of freedom
and
democracy and developed "warm, human attitudes" in Ann Arbor that
he
thinks influenced Wallenberg to make some of the decisions he did
later
on in risking his own life to save thousands of others.

"It came
as no surprise, what he did, then, for humanity later on
in the War,"
Anger said. Wallenberg was a student at the U-M in the
1930s, graduating
in 1935 from the College of Architecture.

"When it came to the
persecutions in Hungary, he was prepared in
his mind for going," he
continued. "It was quite natural for him to
take on this job. You can call
it coincidence, I don't know. I don't
believe in that. I think it was
meant to be that he was the man who
was going to do that
work."

Anger maintains that his friend and countryman, who would
be only
one year older than he is, may still be alive in Russia, where he
was
taken in 1945.

There have been reports of people who have seen
Wallenberg since
that time, he says, the most important of which was a
doctor who
spoke to a Russian physician about Wallenberg and was told that
he
was in a mental hospital in Moscow in 1969, despite reports from
the
Russian government that he had died from a heart attack in
1947.

In 1990, the Soviets opened archives and prisons to
an
international commission investigating the case, but results
were
inconclusive. Anger went to Russia with Wallenberg's family
and
viewed the passport and other personal effects that Russians
had
retained and saw papers that told when Wallenberg spent time
in
Russian prisons and was questioned.

"We know that there are
retired KGB officers who know the secret,"
Anger noted, but they refuse to
talk about Wallenberg. "The Swedish
government says that as long as there
is no proof that he died, there
is still a possibility that he is alive
somewhere.

"I don't think there is much time left if they don't
get results
in a half year or so," Anger said. Wallenberg would now be 83
years
old.

"I hope that this report they are going to issue will
be the truth
and will say what happened. If not, I'm afraid that this
report will
end up in a big question mark."

Anger urged the
audience to help search for the truth by asking
the government to press
for full disclosure.

The Wallenberg Lectures are supported by the
University Wallenberg
Endowment, established in 1985 to commemorate Raoul
Wallenberg and to
recognize those whose courageous actions or writings
call to mind his
own extraordinary accomplishments and human
values.

The endowment also supports one or two graduate students
each
summer whose work is related to the goals of the lectureship.
This
year's Wallenberg Graduate Fellow is Carolyn Kraus, a
doctoral
student in English and education. Her writing includes an account
of
the conditions on the Qualla Boundary Indian Reservations in the
Smoky
Mountains.